I know, I got it the first time. It was funny both times so have a rec. Seriously though, in '73 they didn't want to sell it to us for a time because of religion. Other than that it has been a pretty normal business arrangement. So get rid of religion in government policy and problems go away.

Religion? Really?

ISTR it was Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger who put together the idea as a favor to Saudia Arabia (which, along with most other middle-eastern countries, was angry at the western countries for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war). [I don't see mention of this in the Wikipedia article. However, Saudi Arabia has generally cheated on the OPEC quotas with the U.S., and the embargo substantially increased oil revenues for the Kingdom.]